Well, We Wouldn't Want Him Anyway
Oct. 16th, 2006 03:35 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jenny_wildcatOr, the sixty-second of many rants about the Harry Potter Movies and the Nits Who Think They Know So Much.
The Leaky Cauldron has just posted an interview with Terry Gilliam, who has been rumored in the past to want to direct some of the "Harry Potter" movies. Mr Gilliam has officially put those rumors to rest with this interview, basically saying that the first two were crap and that Alfonso Cuaron had the right idea with "Prisoner of Azkaban".
All I can say is Thank the Lord Above! Cuaron completely butchered PoA and I personally wouldn't let anyone who says that they would do the same thing anywhere near Leavesden Studios with a fifty-mile broomstick. In fact, the first two (Chamber of Secrets, if you want to get technical) were The Best HP films to this point. With the way the fifth is looking, I'm sure that is not going to change anytime soon.
Since Movie Three, all continuity has been lost and those who have only seen the movies have absolutely no clue what the hell is going on. I've complained about it a million times, but the HP movies have just become one big special effects fest after another. There is no attempt to conserve any semblance of a plot (which is the best thing about the books). It's only about creating special effects scenes that we imagined, but we want to see, which, story- and plot-wise, is murder to a movie.
We can't have a house-elf liberation front, but we can have a dragon fly around Hogwarts in a wannabe video game sequence. There will be no sort of emotion for Sirius' death in this movie because the connection Harry was supposed to forge with him in Goblet of Fire was replaced by an intern's half-assed job at talking coals in the fire. And who needs an explanation of Priori Incantatem when you have vicious man-eating shrubbery? Let's not forget the sacrifice of the "Who are the Marauders?", but we can have a Jamaican shrunken head? And since when do kamikaze bluebirds become a vital plot point?
And don't even get me started on blibbering-idiot!Dumbledore. I wish Richard Harris hadn't passed away because he was a million times better at Dumbledore than Michael Gambon. I bawled when Dumbledore died in the book, but I will not shed even one tear when Michael Gambon kicks it. Heck, I might even be cheering on Alan Rickman, you never know.
Another thing: the books are meant to be a continuous whole. You have the same author, the same publisher, the same artist, the same support crew working on the books, so all the books feel like they belong together. Now, the movies may have the same actors and the same logos, but the only thing that has stayed the same in the behind-the-scenes credits is that David Heyman is a producer and the movie is based on the novel by JK Rowling (not novels, but I'll get to that in a minute). The cinematography, style, costumes, hair, music, etc. are all different in each movie. That's why I like the first two because they seem to go together. The subsequent ones aren't even the same movies, so they don't build on each other. Harry is different in every movie. We're not even going to recognize Ginny as the same girl who ran out of the kitchen when she first saw Harry. Granted, she is supposed to grow in the story, but she's at least supposed to be recognizable.
I have figured out my problem with the movies. They started doing them (1) before the whole series was finished, which means (2) they didn't treat the series as a contiguous whole. What I loved about the Lord of the Rings films (and I realize those books were written as one before the publishing company persuaded Tolkien to split it into three) was that the whole project was treated as one story. When the screenwriters sat down to write the script, they realized that they would need things in the first movie to explain things in the third. Now, you obviously couldn't film HP the way LotR was filmed, but you could write the script as a whole and contract the cast and crew for so many years and you could even get it filmed quicker because you have all seven scripts written before you even started filming the first movie.
The one sad thing is that I like most of the actors in the movies. Dan Radcliffe, Rupert Grint, James and Oliver Phelps (Emma Watson seems to be forgetting which friend she's supposed to fancy), Maggie Smith, Alan Rickman, and the list goes on are amazing. I know Evanna Lynch is going to be an awesome Luna Lovegood. I just wish they had better material and support crew to work with.
My only prayer is that someone akin to Peter Jackson will come along in twenty years or so and remake the Harry Potter movies. I suspect that we'll be chucking the present versions out the window and celebrating the new ones.
Love from,
Jenny Wildcat
The Leaky Cauldron has just posted an interview with Terry Gilliam, who has been rumored in the past to want to direct some of the "Harry Potter" movies. Mr Gilliam has officially put those rumors to rest with this interview, basically saying that the first two were crap and that Alfonso Cuaron had the right idea with "Prisoner of Azkaban".
All I can say is Thank the Lord Above! Cuaron completely butchered PoA and I personally wouldn't let anyone who says that they would do the same thing anywhere near Leavesden Studios with a fifty-mile broomstick. In fact, the first two (Chamber of Secrets, if you want to get technical) were The Best HP films to this point. With the way the fifth is looking, I'm sure that is not going to change anytime soon.
Since Movie Three, all continuity has been lost and those who have only seen the movies have absolutely no clue what the hell is going on. I've complained about it a million times, but the HP movies have just become one big special effects fest after another. There is no attempt to conserve any semblance of a plot (which is the best thing about the books). It's only about creating special effects scenes that we imagined, but we want to see, which, story- and plot-wise, is murder to a movie.
We can't have a house-elf liberation front, but we can have a dragon fly around Hogwarts in a wannabe video game sequence. There will be no sort of emotion for Sirius' death in this movie because the connection Harry was supposed to forge with him in Goblet of Fire was replaced by an intern's half-assed job at talking coals in the fire. And who needs an explanation of Priori Incantatem when you have vicious man-eating shrubbery? Let's not forget the sacrifice of the "Who are the Marauders?", but we can have a Jamaican shrunken head? And since when do kamikaze bluebirds become a vital plot point?
And don't even get me started on blibbering-idiot!Dumbledore. I wish Richard Harris hadn't passed away because he was a million times better at Dumbledore than Michael Gambon. I bawled when Dumbledore died in the book, but I will not shed even one tear when Michael Gambon kicks it. Heck, I might even be cheering on Alan Rickman, you never know.
Another thing: the books are meant to be a continuous whole. You have the same author, the same publisher, the same artist, the same support crew working on the books, so all the books feel like they belong together. Now, the movies may have the same actors and the same logos, but the only thing that has stayed the same in the behind-the-scenes credits is that David Heyman is a producer and the movie is based on the novel by JK Rowling (not novels, but I'll get to that in a minute). The cinematography, style, costumes, hair, music, etc. are all different in each movie. That's why I like the first two because they seem to go together. The subsequent ones aren't even the same movies, so they don't build on each other. Harry is different in every movie. We're not even going to recognize Ginny as the same girl who ran out of the kitchen when she first saw Harry. Granted, she is supposed to grow in the story, but she's at least supposed to be recognizable.
I have figured out my problem with the movies. They started doing them (1) before the whole series was finished, which means (2) they didn't treat the series as a contiguous whole. What I loved about the Lord of the Rings films (and I realize those books were written as one before the publishing company persuaded Tolkien to split it into three) was that the whole project was treated as one story. When the screenwriters sat down to write the script, they realized that they would need things in the first movie to explain things in the third. Now, you obviously couldn't film HP the way LotR was filmed, but you could write the script as a whole and contract the cast and crew for so many years and you could even get it filmed quicker because you have all seven scripts written before you even started filming the first movie.
The one sad thing is that I like most of the actors in the movies. Dan Radcliffe, Rupert Grint, James and Oliver Phelps (Emma Watson seems to be forgetting which friend she's supposed to fancy), Maggie Smith, Alan Rickman, and the list goes on are amazing. I know Evanna Lynch is going to be an awesome Luna Lovegood. I just wish they had better material and support crew to work with.
My only prayer is that someone akin to Peter Jackson will come along in twenty years or so and remake the Harry Potter movies. I suspect that we'll be chucking the present versions out the window and celebrating the new ones.
Love from,
Jenny Wildcat
